Hi All, Somewhat off-topic post regarding the upcoming conjunction of the sun, moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Venus and Mars. If you go to the SOHO LASCO image: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs_small/20000503_184 2_c3.gif you can see three of these planets already. Saturn is at the far right, Jupiter is about halfway between Saturn and the occulted disk of the sun, and Mercury is by itself on the other side. There are also dozens of 6th, 7th and 8th magnitude stars visible in the image. I have created a corresponding image with SkyMap in case anyone wants to compare the two. (Let me know and I'll send you a GIF file of the SKYMAP screen capture). Interestingly, there are some "stars" in the SOHO imagery that have no match in Tycho down to 9th magnitude. Some of these are likely gamma or proton hits in the focal plane array (there are a few streaks, most notably in the upper left corner of the image). But I suspect that many are indeed stars -- hot UV stars that don't show up as bright in the visible. --Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 03 2000 - 16:18:58 PDT